Not in my perfect mind

 Oh man, I am addled. ADDLED. Last week was work-busy, and admin overspill into this week. Somehow the result has been cotton-wool brain and evenings spent staring at not much for most of the evenings of this week. Fortunately, vegan week tends towards the easier cooking, or at least the stuff that's harder to wreck with brief inattention. Or really prolonged inattention, come to that. If you are similarly addled, I commend these to you: tried and tested by an idiot.

Coronation cauliflower

This is the recipe from Crave, but I hear Tommi Miers did a good one in the Guardian which you should be able to run down. 

First, roast your cauliflower, which is a most excellent answer to almost anything in life. With oil and some curry powder, 45 minutes or so on hot, till it is lightly charred and soft. 

I have terrible memories of Coronation chicken from a family trauma where my mum catered the wake with infinite chicken that nobody wanted, and we ended up eating it out of the freezer for months. Glad to say the sauce for this one was not too reminiscent. Mayonnaise mixed with yoghurt, seasoning, mango chutney (you could go lime pickle if you want to be fierce), chopped celery bits, and lemon juice to balance. 

The recipe calls for little gem lettuces, in crusty rolls, with coriander. That all got either forgotten or couldn't be purchased in a timely way, so it was just inna bun, with bits of random salad. Ugly, but good.

It was lunch for several days, and I can't deny that the last day, with half a leftover roll and some cold pasta, was not my finest leftovers hour. But up until then it was grand. 

Chanterelles with pasta

At the more elevated end of veg cooking, I was second in a three-woman queue at the posh deli towards closing time last Saturday, impatiently waiting for the last of the girolles. Didn't manage as many as I'd have liked, but enough for one glorious pasta. 

Look at the joooooy of the gently broken-up mushrooms! Cook gently with butter for a bit (not too long), then take them out and cook a handful of halved cherry tomatoes in the cooking juices, with garlic, and mix the lot as fabulous pasta sauce. 

A blizzard of chopped parsley and parmesan, hooray. Was very nice. I wish I could afford many posh mushrooms every autumn and I also wish I'd got off my arse earlier in the day before the deli nearly ran out. Helas. 

Still, I had gone to market to get lots of cherry tomatoes first thing, to make the excellent easy tomato curry, so let's not give up entirely.  Still heartily excellent and tasty, and with just a naan on the side also very speedy.

Finally, Chana Masala

Which I think I've made before - the usual slow onion, then add whole ground coriander and cumin, ginger, garlic, tomato paste plus a couple of chopped tomatoes, turmeric, garam masala, [chilli if you do], a hefty half-glass of water, tin or two of chickpeas and leave it to cook for a good 45 minutes. Check occasionally, add more water if it's drying out. Finish with a bit of slaked cornflour if wet, plus coriander. 

Or, and I can't entirely recommend this approach though the end product was delicious, you could check on it, be under the illusion you've turned it out, and do a full hour-plus of yoga surrounded by gentle chickpea cookery smells but not quite actual burning. 

Whoa. It wasn't a disaster, quite, but I could not guarantee repetition of success:

I did not cornflour, for obvious reasons, but heaped it onto rice cooked with courgettes, and mixed the coriander around pretty generally. 

Dumb luck, but all good. Let's all keep on muddling through. That seems to be the primary option, at least until the fog lifts.